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- Characterized by intelligence and cleverness: the symbolic flight of the raven through the ages
The Cultural History of the Raven is the third monograph in the "animal" cycle of the French medievalist Michel Pastoureau, who has previously examined the symbolic significance of the wolf and the bull, and who plans to study the fox, the eagle, the deer, the donkey, and the rooster as characters of the European "supporting bestiary". By this Pastoureau means a kind of pool of selected animals attracting increased human attention. Critic Lidia Maslova presents the book of the week, especially for Izvestia.
Michel Pastoureau
"The Raven: A Cultural History"
M.: AST: Ice, 2025. - Foreword by M. R. Mayzuls; [translated from French by Denis Golovanenko]. - 192 с.
As Mikhail Mayzuls specifies in the preface to "The Raven", human relations with other species inhabiting the planet are not reduced to utilitarian goals, but grow with ideology: "...human policy towards various animals is determined not only by his desire to use their meat, skin, fur, fat, bone, feathers and muscle power or, on the contrary, by his desire to protect himself from them, but also by the moral properties attributed to them by various mythologies and religions.
The raven has roughly the same problem with morality as the wolf: both are associated with vice and evil rather than goodness and light. In the case of the raven, this has been the case since the Flood - it is one of the most important subjects in Pastouro's book, distinguishing between the respectful treatment of the raven in pagan cultures and the hostile biblical tradition. In the Christian paradigm, the raven's reputation was tarnished by the story of Noah, who after the flood sent two birds on a reconnaissance mission - before the dove, a raven went to look for a habitable land, but failed in his task: "...when the storm subsides, Noah releases the raven to see if the water has subsided, but instead of delivering the good news, it lingers to eat carrion. Such selfish behavior, coupled with necrophagy for a long time placed him among the sinful animals cursed by God".
Nevertheless, and in Christian sources "wicked bird" sometimes appears as a positive character, for example, in the biography of the Old Testament prophet Elijah, removed to the desert, where he is saved from hunger by two ravens: "... every morning a raven flew over him and threw in the hollow of his long cloak a piece of bread, and in the evenings another raven in the same way threw him meat (3 Kings 17:6). But the prejudice against ravens was so great that their useful contribution to the history of Christianity was often overshadowed: "In the Middle Ages and early modern times this scene was sometimes depicted in monastic refectories, but some monasteries - or some artists - were apparently embarrassed by blackbirds as messengers of the Lord, so the infamous ravens were sometimes replaced by doves: as if Elijah in the wilderness were supported by the Holy Spirit."
The raven also feeds two other respected holy fathers: "Retreating into the desert, Anthony learns that another hermit, Paul of Thebes, to whom the raven brought half a loaf of bread every day, did the same. Antony decided to visit him, and on the day he arrived and the two saints gathered to share a meal, the raven miraculously brought a whole loaf of bread." And yet the stained glass window of Chartres Cathedral reflecting this story, reproduced among the book's illustrations, depicts, again, a more credible dove instead of the dubious raven.
As one of the main Christian authorities against the raven, Pastoureau mentions Augustine, whom he considers to be a zoophobe: "According to Augustine, a clear distinction must be made between man, created in the image of God, and the animal, an imperfect creature: failure to observe this distinction between human and animal nature is a grave sin, so that he personally seems to be disgusted and frightened by animals.
Augustine's claim specifically to the raven is that he "heard in the crow's cawing the Latin words cras, cras ('tomorrow, tomorrow') and for this reason he likened this bird to a sinner who constantly postpones confession, contrition and repentance until tomorrow". Augustine is contrasted by Pastouro with the "exceptional casus belli" of Rabanus Moor, Abbot of Fulda and later Archbishop of Mainz. In his treatise On the Universe, Raban polemicizes with Augustine's color and sound associations: "The color of this bird's plumage leads Raban to think not of the devil, but of a preacher. He is certainly talkative, but he is concerned for the salvation of the souls of the faithful and calls them to conversion. The raven, contrary to what Augustine claimed, speaks not cras, cras ('tomorrow, tomorrow') but corax, corax ('raven, raven')."
Pasturo comments on the archbishop's surprising sympathy for the disgraced bird, not without irony: "Such favor toward the raven - unique for the Carolingian era - looks especially remarkable if we remember that Rabanus himself has a Germanic name derived from the raven (Hraban/Hrabe), and that his full Latinized name, Rabanus Maurus, literally means 'black raven.'" Obviously, when reasoning about animal symbolism, it is not easy to condemn the bird whose name you bear."
In the chapter "The War Against the Raven," Pastoureau relates how, in the eighth and twelfth centuries. The raven, revered in Northern Europe as a guardian of sailors and warriors, advisor and attribute of the gods Odin and Wotan, fell into the millstones of the Christian struggle against pagan vestiges: "Just as hundreds of thousands of trees were cut down, uprooted, as thousands of stones were broken, hewn, as springs were dammed or turned into wells, as sacred places were converted into chapels, so were killed thousands of bears and destroyed in countless numbers of ravens". However, the Church of the early Middle Ages also had less brutal strategies to combat pagan raven cults, namely the depiction of the raven as a friend of the saint - "the man of God." Thus, according to hagiographical works, the raven saved the body of St. Vincent, tortured in 304 under Diocletian and thrown to be eaten by wild beasts, and also managed to snatch the bread poisoned by envious people from the hands of St. Benedict.
Nevertheless, all these godly manifestations of the raven could not overcome the deep, instinctive negativity, and in the bestiaries of the XII-XIII centuries he appears as an "unclean bird". The only exception Pastoureau considers Richard de Furnival, author of a special, courtesan "Bestiary of Love": "Richard lists the qualities of animals not to instruct the reader in religion and morality, but to speculate about love and the behavior of lovers: how to win a lady, how to preserve love, what mistakes to avoid..." In "Bestiary of Love," the creepy custom of the raven to peck out the eyes of the dead is transformed into a metaphor that Pastoureau praises for its elegance: "...finding a man dead somewhere, the raven first of all pecks out his eyes, and then through the eye sockets extracts the brain and does not stop until the whole brain is pulled out. Such is also the action of love. At first acquaintance it captures a man by means of his eyes, and never would love have taken possession of him without his sight." And it is true, de Furnival can not refuse neither in figurative thinking, nor in understanding the psychology of intersexual relations: a woman, first catching a man in the eyes, later often eats his brain, like a hungry crow.
The voraciousness that prevented the raven from fulfilling Noah's commission is mentioned in a long list of vices attributed to the demonic bird, which Pasturo summarizes from medieval bestiaries: "The raven is a proud man: he considers himself the most beautiful of birds, although in fact he is one of the most disgusting. <...> Finally, he is a hypocrite: the raven pretends to be stupid, but in fact is full of malice and cunning. He invariably turns his mind to bad deeds and amuses himself by deceiving people and other birds, and sometimes even larger animals." It is the incredible cleverness of the raven that Pasturo eventually declares to be the main reason for the ancient human belief in the overly brainy feathered creature: "No one says it explicitly, but it is obvious that all the peasants thought about it and wondered if the raven could have made a pact with the devil. How else to explain that a simple bird, not too big, could detect such intelligence, circumvent all traps, adapt to any situation, anticipate the behavior of animals and people?"
The final part of the book contains some unpleasant figures: the ratio of brain weight to body weight in a raven is 37-38, while in humans it is 21, and in chimpanzees - 8, and in general the list of cognitive abilities of the raven, which leaves most animals and birds far behind, eventually makes Pasturo himself respectfully confess: "The raven is not only a mediator between heaven and earth, between life and death, he is also a hoaxer. He can fool anyone: animals, people, gods. Sometimes even a historian can't cope with him.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
